New Questions About When Romney Left Bain Capital

Holly Bailey, Yahoo! Finance

Thursday, 12 Jul 2012 | 1:08 PM ETYahoo Finance

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Government filings say Mitt Romney may have worked at Bain Capital longer than he's publicly suggested.

Romney has repeatedly said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. But according to the Boston Globe, Bain's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission say Romney remained the firm's "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" until 2002.

The Globe also reports Romney's financial disclosure forms filed in Massachusetts list him as the sole owner of Bain Capital in 2002 and say he earned money as a Bain "executive" in 2001 and 2002.

The timing is notable because Romney has said his resignation from the company in 1999 meant he was not responsible for companies owned by Bain that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date. But both Bain Capital and the Romney campaign disputed the story, the latter describing the article as "inaccurate."

"As Bain Capital has said, as Gov. Romney has said, and as has been confirmed by independent fact checkers multiple times, Gov. Romney left Bain Capital in February of 1999 to run the Olympics and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement.

But the Obama campaign immediately seized on the report, slamming Romney's "big Bain lie." They used the article to press on with their calls for Romney to release more information about his personal finances, questioning whether the GOP nominee is "concealing his tax returns" because he's trying to hide something.

"It's time for Mitt Romney to come clean so that the American people can make their own judgments about his record and his motivations," Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager, said in an email to reporters.